uncr3ative's comments

uncr3ative | 12 years ago | on: How D.C. could look if the height restriction changes

it's also where the nih and nasa are located. I had 3 technical jobs there that had nothing to do with politics, and my 2 friends who live in the area work on technology things which have nothing to do with politics. Rent in DC is exorbitant and making demand higher by not allowing tall buildings seems silly to me.

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: After Facebook fails

It really isn't "free" entertainment. There are many companies making lots of money (zynga for instance) selling virtual goods on facebook with FB credits. FB gets 30%. I'm not trying to say it's the same amount of money that google makes, but that alone is in the millions of dollars per month of gross profit.

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Why it's OK to leave a tech job at 5 p.m.

I don't know if people should receive actual money, but it makes sense to me that they receive access to safe housing, food, healthcare and education. I don't think this can work in poorer societies, but in ones which can afford it, well, it seems most humane. If you aren't working, and can, well you won't be able to brag to your friends about having the latest ipad, but you should still have a place to sleep and food to eat. I think most people don't like sitting idly by all day long and since a lot of fun things cost money, they'd be willing to sacrifice some of their time to be able to afford those other things. I have been to Norway a few times and I liked the way they managed to balance things out there. Also, I recently watched this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html How economic inequality harms societies and I thought it was interesting.

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Why it's OK to leave a tech job at 5 p.m.

Maybe because I'm not used to java anymore I constantly find myself wanting to do things that are "bad" in Java. I want my function to return more than one variable and then accept it on the other side like x,y = getCoordinates(); Yes I can do something almost like that in java with an array or collection but it's considered "wrong." Sometimes, I want to have a module with just functions, not an a class. Writing the long list of setters and getters that just return and set themselves is really frustrating to me, knowing that in other languages I would just have properties. And working around this in java by making them all "public" is considered "wrong."

And while I agree that java has excellent tools, the one tool that doesn't work as well or as easily for me is the interactive console. Perhaps it's java's verbosity, or maybe this tool hasn't been as fleshed out as it has been in python, javascript and even php (phpsh), but I haven't found one that works as easily for me.

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Where is the casual programming?

with ipython you do get some of that auto completion for python. It'll autocomplete the module name for you, but you do have to figure out you want that module first, so you'd need to google and realize you want shutil for dealing with files. I use it a lot when I'm interacting with new APIs or even just for writing the code as I go.

  In [1]: import sh
  sha     shelve  shlex   shutil  
  In [1]: import shutil
  In [2]: shutil.
  ...
  shutil.copy  shutil.errno  shutil.move
  In [2]: help(shutil.move)
To do other more powerful automation kind of stuff, this is pretty nifty: http://sikuli.org/

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Agile is a Sham

Amazon is split up into many different teams and each team follows it's own process. Some of these teams do what they call "agile."

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Why do we let sexist creeps pervade the software industry?

I agree that instilling confidence that they have a right to be where they are and the ability to learn and be what they want is key.

I don't think women are generally a minority - I only ever feel like one when I start working with new teams at work or classrooms in the university. But being a minority everywhere you go -ugh- that sense of isolation sounds really tough :(

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Why do we let sexist creeps pervade the software industry?

Sorry, I obviously wasn’t clear. I never intended to say that I was "embarrassed by my gender" as Michael seemed to believe and I don’t think that the guys in that classroom were participating in offensive sexist behavior (most of the time they weren’t.) And women of course rate other women and men, both sexually and just with stereotypes. However, all that doesn’t change that slight feeling of intrusion, and isolation. I’ve worked in various companies now, and on every team I’ve been on (even teams as large 30 developers) I was the only woman, so it was good practice walking into that classroom in the university. Sometimes, it is still a little lonely.

But here I am coding at a prestigious gaming company, and I agree, a lot of other women could do the same. But, if I wasn’t so determined– if during university I didn’t think that programming starcraft was the definition of cool – I might have decided it wasn’t worth it to go into that room every day. I could have gone to study biology or architecture or psychology and not felt the least bit awkward. And I had girl friends who I would convince that programming is “dead useful” by automating something for them. I would try to convince them they should sign up to some programming class and they would say “nah, too much testosterone.”

I’m really not trying to make men into “villains” or “creeps” with this monolog. In fact, I’m trying to say that before we get to the sexist creeps who assume I can’t code because “you’re a girl” or that I won’t be able to understand what they are talking about because I’m not the type who can do math… Before all that, you have to walk into a room where you are different and alone. I realize that this is what it feels like to be a minority. As a white woman it isn’t something I’m used to feeling, but every time I stepped into a CS classroom I definitely did. Obviously none of these are obstacles that are impossible to overcome, and if women had no choice in the university – I’m sure most of them would be perfectly capable of walking into a room full of guys and getting a degree in CS. Some of them might even enjoy it.

PS thanks thricedotted for explaining the intruder/invisible feeling better

uncr3ative | 14 years ago | on: Why do we let sexist creeps pervade the software industry?

Imagine you are going to class of 100 students, 99 of which are women. It is fairly awkward, like walking into a men's club. Because I am generally quiet, mostly the guys pretended I wasn't there (definitely, better than the alternative.) They would talk about things I had no interest listening to - rated various women, and more innocent things like football. Anyway, every time I walked into that room I felt like I was intruding. And I think if you were to walk into a room with 99 women you would feel awkward as well. From my perspective, as a woman software engineer - there is no "perhaps" about it.
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